DU’s Drew Shore, Nick Shore and Chris Nutini visited a split-squad peewee practice with the Colorado Thunderbirds and Littleton Hawks A Red on Tuesday night at South Suburban Ice Arena. The Shores’ youngest brother, Baker, plays for the triple-A Thunderbirds, and Drew, Nick and Nutini grew up playing for the Hawks.

T-Birds coach Kent Murphy introduces DU defenseman Chris Nutini, who is the first of three Pios to speak to the boys about playing college hockey.

The Pioneers trio represent the three Littleton double-A national titles won by head coach Kent Murphy, who is now the Thunderbirds’ head coach. Nutini was on the 2001 team — Colorado’s first double-A national champion. Drew and Nick led the Hawks to the 2003 and 2005 national titles, respectively.

Also pictured is former DU defenseman Zach Blom, a Thunderbirds assistant coach and LHA co-director, and his father, Buddy, the former DU goalie who serves as the T-Birds’ goalie coach. The T-Birds also are coached by former LHA star Kevin Fredrick and former Avalanche defenseman Curtis Leschyshyn.

Great staff, eh?

The LHA peewees are coached by Kevin Whalen, who was the bench boss last season for the Thunderbirds’ U18 team.

In addition to playing without 14-goal scorers Drew Shore and Jason Zucker, DU will take on a decent Northern Michigan team (9-8-3) this weekend without Beau Bennett. The freshman and first-round draft pick of the Pittsburgh Penguins will miss his fourth and fifth consecutive games with a knee injury.

Before the Pios closed out the first half of the season with a series at Alaska-Anchorage Dec. 10-11, Bennett said he was confident he would return to the lineup this weekend. But he tried to skate this week with the team and the knee just isn’t responding. Sounds like he’ll sit out for precautionary reasons. The injury, suffered Dec. 4 at Minnesota-Duluth, is listed as a strain.

Shore and Zucker, meanwhile, are in Buffalo playing for the U.S. World Junior team. Combined, Shore, Zucker and Bennett (three) have scored 31 of 66 goals for DU.

The Shore brothers: Nick, 16, Quentin, 15, Drew, 18, and Baker, 9, of Englewood, are the top Colorado hockey family around. Drew was drafted No. 2 last week by the Florida Panthers. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post)

Quentin Shore, the younger brother of DU freshman Drew Shore and incoming Pioneers forward Nick Shore, has accepted USA Hockey’s offer to play for the U.S. National Development Program under-17 team next season. Quentin, who will follow Drew and Nick to the USNDP, is currently playing for the Colorado Thunderbirds triple-A under-16 team, which today departed for nationals in Chicago.

Quentin has reportedly been offered a scholarship at DU, beginning in the fall of 2012. In 74 games this season for the T-Birds, Shore has 41 goals and 95 points.

“We want to wish Quentin all the best in Ann Arbor next season,” said T-Birds coach Angelo Ricci, a former DU forward. “The Thunderbirds program continues to advance players to the NTDP. Quentin will be the third Thunderbird player to earn a spot on the national team, joining Sean Lorenz and Nick Shore.”

Ricci added that Seth Swenson turned down an USNDP offer a year ago, instead choosing to play major-junior for Portland of the Western Hockey League.

I’m working on a historical Joe Sakic story that led me to Lorne Frey, who was the assistant coach and GM of the Swift Current Broncos when Sakic played there from 1986-1988.

I got a bunch of good stuff about Sakic from Frey, now the assistant GM of the Kelowna Rockets, and then we talked about Frey’s current WHL team — which has some interesting University of Denver ties.

The Rockets recently drafted forward Stepan Novotny, who signed a letter of intent with DU, and was originally pegged to become a Pioneer this fall, but then deferred for 2009.

Frey confirmed that Novotny — who played part of last season for the renowned Shattuck-St. Mary’s prep team — that the Czech native is going the major-junior route.

“An agent informaed us about (Novotny), so we ended up drafting him,” Frey said. “We’ve talked to him and he’s coming.”

This was also confirmed Wednesday by DU assistant coach Steve Miller. “He just thought it’d be better to go to the Western League,” Miller said. “It’s dissapointing to lose a player of his caliber.”

Novotny probably didn’t like the fact that DU wanted him to play another year in junior-A — primarily because the Pios return 11 of their top 12 forwards.

“We talked to him about the depth of the forwards and where he would fit in,” Miller said. “At the end of the day if he wanted to come to Denver he was going to come to Denver. With that said, we talked about waiting another year, and in the end he thought it’d be better for him to go to the Western Hockey League.”

Frey and I also talked about the Shore brothers of Denver, both of whom are DU prospects. Drew Shore, who played last season for the U.S. under-17 team, is comitted to DU for 2009, but was drafted by the WHL’s Chilliwack Chiefs. Nick Shore likely will follow his brother at the U.S. under-17 team in Ann Arbor, but Kelowna owns his draft rights.

Frey hinted that both kids are intrigued by major-junior and will have tough decisions. According to one of my Front Range youth sources, Nick Shore will pick between the Rockets and DU, but his decision might sway where Drew ends up. In other words, both kids likely will play major-junior or NCAA, but not one in each.

Miller can’t comment on the Shores because DU hasn’t signed either. But from what I’m hearing, Drew will be a Pio in 2009 and Nick — who will begin his freshman year of high school — will say no to the Rockets next year and don a DU sweater in 2012.

THEY ALL PLAYED youth hockey for the Littleton Hawks, arguably the top development system in Colorado (not including state all-star orginizations).

Tim Gibbar, president of the Littleton Hockey Association, sent me the following alumni “starter” list, which he says is incomplete. But it’s still very impressive, partly because most of the Avalanche kids play here. Bourque, Roy, Blake, Hartley, Foote, Sakic and other former or current Avs have sent their kids to LHA. Many other big names — former DU stars Jesse Cook, Ryan Dingle, J.D. Corbin — as well as current Pios — Tyler Ruegsegger and Chris Nutini — went through the program. CC freshman goalie Richard Bachman also played at LHA.

Yes, I’m partial to LHA because my son is a Hawk, currently in his final year of the Initiation Program (squirts next year) but his participation helped me uncover how many great players Littleton has produced, and the names speak volumes.

Three 2009 incoming DU recruits playing for the U.S. under 17 team – goalie Adam Murray, defenseman William Wrenn and forward Drew Shore (from Denver) – were involved in a wild game-ending, bench-clearning brawl against Russia last week in the Four Nations Cup in Dimitrov, Russia.

Sure, I grew up on “Slap Shot” – which is, by the way, THE BEST SPORTS MOVIE EVER – so I’ll extend my professional reigns a little bit and encourage you to watch the video. In today’s hockey, at any level, you just don’t see this stuff anymore. For old-time hockey folks, you’ll really get a kick out of the tape.

Murray, Wrenn and Shore each dressed in the 2-1 loss, which gave USA the silver medal, but I couldn’t catch any of them fighting, although they can be spotted on the ice. Murray shares the crease with Brandon Maxwell, who went toe-to-toe with a Russian that I don’t believe was a goalie. (The video is a little blurry.)

I caught it at Western College Hockey’s site here. And the following is the Russian based address: click here.